After April snowfall, Louisville looks to peel back two-day-a-week watering limits

Snowy, wet April puts city's water portfolio in good shape

By John Aguilar Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
04/25/2013 06:28:44 PM MDT

Updated:
04/25/2013 06:30:23 PM MDT

City worker Matt Loomis checks the sprinkler system outside the Louisville Police Department s headquarters on Thursday. The city is expected to reverse its two-day-a-week watering restrictions because of recent heavy snowfall. (Cliff Grassmick / Daily Camera)

Louisville's mandatory two-day-a-week outdoor watering schedule -- what would have been the toughest water restrictions in Boulder County -- appears to have been smothered by April's multiple snowstorms and the area's late-forming but formidable snowpack.

City Manager Malcolm Fleming said he plans to ask the City Council to lift the restrictions, which included a ban on installing new turf sod or seed, at its next meeting May 7. Since the restrictions are set to go into effect Wednesday, the city won't enforce them for the first week of the new month, he said.

Louisville will continue to limit outdoor watering to between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. this summer.

"Boulder had the snowiest April on record and similar weather was happening higher up and that dramatically changed the outlook," Fleming said. "Our water rights are such and the snowpack is such that we'll have plenty of water in May and June.

"It doesn't make sense to impose restrictions."

He said today's outlook for a wet, green spring just wasn't the case on April 2, when the council passed the ordinance. At that time, snowpack in the South Platte River basin was hovering around 70 percent of normal and was not much better in the Colorado River basin. The two basins supply much of Boulder County's communities with water, including Louisville.

On Thursday, Mage Hultstrand, assistant snow survey supervisor for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said the snowpack for the South Platte is now at 95 percent of normal -- or 15.2 inches of snow-water equivalent -- and the snowpack in the Colorado River basin is at 110 percent of normal -- or 15.8 inches of snow-water equivalent. Both basins, she said, reached their peak snowpack level Thursday.

"April was a big turnaround month," she said. "We received well above normal for our snowpack for April."

Boulder has so far seen a record 47.6 inches of snow in April. By contrast, the spring of 2012 started off hot and dry and the deadly North Fork Fire wildfire sprang up in the crispy foothills of Jefferson County in late March. Spring runoff is expected to begin much later and last much longer than it did last year and that, Hultstrand said, means that demand for water has been delayed, allowing reservoirs to fill to more sustainable levels.

"Right now, people aren't watering when this time last year they were," she said.

Fleming specifically cited snowpack readings at the Lake Eldora and University Camp monitoring stations -- both located close to the South Boulder Creek watershed -- as illustrative of Louisville's much-improved water picture. Lake Eldora is measuring 116 percent of the median for this time of year while University Camp is at 92 percent of normal.

"This will likely give Louisville enough water in South Boulder Creek in May and June to fill the city's reservoirs and completely satisfy expected demand, even if it is hot and dry during that period," he said. "Not using the water that is available during that period would unnecessarily penalize the city's water customers and not take best advantage of the water rights we have available."

He said keeping restrictions in place would require the city to spend money and time on communications and enforcement that "don't make sense to the average person."

Louisville Public Works Director Kurt Kowar said the city's primary reservoirs -- Harper Lake, Louisville Reservoir and Marshall Lake -- should reach maximum storage levels by the middle of next month. The city uses about 4,000 acre-feet of water a year.

But he said the city will continue to urge residents to conserve water and not use it in a way where it runs off of lawns and into the street.

"I don't think we view this as the drought being over," he said. "We see this as we got a good thing going. It provides us with available water into May and June, but if the rain and snow go away, we may have to reconsider restrictions later in the summer."

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